Renewed bad luck. . . and happy endings

Some of you may remember a couple of months ago when I wrote about the streak of bad luck we were having. I whined and wailed about how much it sucks to have everything go wrong when you are pregnant and expecting twins and thus need to save that money for said twins and not, say, car repairs or stupid dog injuries. Ha! If only I could have seen that not only would I get fatter (fifty pounds and counting!) but that it was possible for things to get worse. Ha ha to you Mariko of two months ago! You were so naive. . .

Actually, things didn't start out so bad this week. We've all been tired and grumpy and we whined our way through some Christmas shopping. Then I went to my weekly NST (a non-stress test in which they monitor the babies movements, heart rates and my contractions as a precautionary measure). At this NST, just as Bob and I were getting ready to leave and perhaps actually have time to eat lunch by ourselves, silly Baby B decided to go ahead and have her heart rate drop for a few seconds. We were thus thrust reluctantly back into our places for more monitoring. I, at least, was relatively calm, because everything thus far had been fine and I was sure it was just one of those things. But these hospitals don't like to leave these things unchecked. So after a doctor's appointment, off we went to get an ultrasound. We had to wait for over an hour, and then. . . . we had the ultrasound tech intern from hell. She was not only socially inept and failed to tell us that she was training, but she started the exam by looking for the placentas, failing to find them and then questioning me about their whereabouts.

Are you sure there are two of them in there? she asked.
What?? I responded. Do you mean babies or placentas?
Placentas, she replied. I can only see one!
Well, I'm sure there's two, I said. I've had several ultrasounds before this.
Well, did they happen to tell you where they might be?

HUH???? Bob and I were totally befuddled by her incompetence. All became clear when another woman walked in, asked how the tech was doing, and then proceeded to go through every step of the entire exam with her. Very tedious. Bob seethed. Then we had to wait hours for the results. We were at the hospital for over five hours, with minimal food. Twins must eat!

Event #2: I decided to wash the slipcover on our couch with a load of our best sheets. I failed to check the slipcover cracks for items. Red crayon made its way into the dryer. Chaos ensued. Has anyone else ever done this? It looked like we had tried to kill somebody on our couch and then stabbed them some more on our bed. Awful. And the inside of the dryer too. We read on the internet to use WD-40, dish soap, hot water and much scrubbing, but even after many washings with bleach, no luck. I really wanted to cry. All this was put into perspective however by Event #3. Read on . . .

Saturday we were going to start the day with some exciting dryer cleaning and spot treating. Bob, however, felt like he had pulled a muscle and had some chest pain, so he took a nap while Lilli and I went in search of dry cleaning solvent. (The slipcover must be salvaged!) When I came back, Bob still was not feeling so hot. We wondered what it could be. We speculated about muscle pulls and strains. Bob went in search of muscle relaxant. When he got back, things were worse so we tried to figure out what to do. ER? We had had bad experiences waiting and we thought it might be pricey. The walk in clinic close to our house was closed by then. He decided to drive to another clinic about twenty minutes away.

Two hours later I got a call from the nurse at the clinic saying that Bob was being taken by ambulance to the hospital. Huh?! She informed me that he had had a spontaneous pneumothorax, although I had no idea what that meant. I rushed to get us ready to go to the hospital. I got us all outside when Lilli looked up at me and said, "mama, I need shoes."

I rushed to the hospital only to wait for another half an hour before Bob arrived. I will make a long story short by simply saying that he had quite the ordeal in the ER for six hours, where they inserted a chest tube to drain the fluid and air from around his left lung. A spontaneous pneumothorax you see (thank you internet) is when an air sac in your lung bursts, letting air out which in turn compresses the lung, leading to a collapsed lung. It seems to happen more in tall, thin men and there isn't necessarily any reason for its occurence. Hence "spontaneous." Anyway, after this he had to stay in the hospital for a couple of nights while the chest tube worked and his lung reinflated. He came home today and has to rest for about a week.

So! You can see we've had a bit of excitement. Now at least if we fail to send out Christmas cards or get you a Christmas present, we've got a good excuse for you! Ha!

But really, everyone in both our families has been so supportive and thoughtful and kind. Thank you so much to everybody. This little adventure has really brought into perspective for us how lucky we are to have each other and our families and friends, and how when you are stressed about something, things could always be worse. Even in this case, things could definitely have been worse. We are so thankful that Bob is going to be fine and that his stay in the hospital was actually pretty minimal. We are so grateful that our twins-to-be and Lilli are healthy. Hey, and even some of the spots on the slipcover came out. What are a few bloody looking sheets when compared to such a bounty of blessings, really?

We ARE worn out, however, and so: Happy Holidays to everyone! Here's hoping you have a wonderful, stressless, accident-free, lovely time with family and friends. Just watch out for incomptent medical professionals, crayons, and spontaneous pneumothoraces!

I remembered. . .

I remembered one thing anyway that I had forgotten from the last post:

Bob is CONVINCED (drumroll please!) that Lilli is well on her way to becoming a reader. Not that I am not a proud mama myself, but I happen to be a little bit more skeptical.

What I will admit she can do is recognize certain words. Bob will write "lilli" or "mama" or "daddy" on her pad and she can usually identify the word correctly. Not reading per se, but a pretty good party trick for impressing those easily impressed grandparents.

Now if she could just memorize what every word looks like, well then, she would be able to read! And then maybe we wouldn't have to read "The Little Engine that Could" for the thousandth time! That would be a beautiful thing. . .

This particular morning Bob and I had stayed up the night before and decorated the tree. When groggy little Lilli woke up, she was AMAZED to see what had happened to the tree in our living room. Of course, Josie had to be shown everything amazing about the tree, and each ornament had to be admired and touched. I wish I had had the sense to break out the video camera. Still footage just doesn't cut it!

Lilli and Addy, each enjoying their toys.

Trying to reach an especially enticing ornament. . .

Making Josie touch the tree and admire the lights. . .

"Addy, look at that tree!"

Wearing her new birthday dress and suspiciously eyeing the people singing "Happy Birthday."

Blowing out the candles with Daddy's help.

Reading a new birthday book with Grandma Cindy.

I'm forgetting something. . .

I've had a mental list for a long time of things that I want to blog about Lilli. The problem with mental lists is. . .um. . .they're easy to forget!

A lot of things have happened though. Lilli turned TWO on November 21st. At her doctor's appointment the next day she measured in at 36" and 32 lbs. More than her physical growth though, it's just amazing on a daily basis to see the development of her language ability and the explosion of her personality.

Probably the most fascinating thing to me is how she is starting to use her imagination. She has been playing with dolls for a couple of months now, but more and more she is pretending and making believe with them. She changes their diapers or talks to them like they understand what she is saying. Often times, when Lilli wants something, the dolly wants it too. Dolly often wants to eat lunch. And she calls her dolls names of other real babies she knows, which right now are her cousin Eloise and our friends' baby Josie. It was so cute to see her excited over the Christmas tree, demanding that Josie, "look at that!" or "isn't that pretty, Josie?" She also pretends with her other toys, but I can give her something as simple as a tupperware container and she will pretend that she is eating raisins or something out of it. "Delicious raisins Mommy! Mama want some raisins?"

We've tried explaining the concept to her that she is going to have a brother and a sister, and that they are in Mama's tummy, but she really doesn't get it yet. One day Bob tried telling her that she was going to get real babies, but then she wanted them RIGHT THEN. We'll see how she feels when they actually come :) Today she surprised me though with a funny little comment: I had tried to explain to yesterday that when she was a teeny little baby that she had lived in Mama's tummy too. She looked at me with a very perplexed expression, and I just assumed that it had gone right over her head. This morning though, while we were sitting on the bed, she exclaimed that Atticus (our dog) had been in Mama's tummy too! I guess that makes sense if she thinks of me as being Atticus' mama as well. I just hope she doesn't treat her little brother and sister the way she treats Addy ("bad dog!" and much tail pulling.) Although of course she loves him too. This morning she hugged him and smiled and told me "Lilli and Addy!"

Ok, I can see that if I keep on writing like this my entry will be about three thousand words (!), so I present you with an abbreviated version, in list format:

She can finally sing the ABC's, complete with final verse!
Talking to herself, constantly.
She loves to draw! Or have us draw for her: I have drawn about one thousand snails this month.
She's learning the rules of language. She knows how to pluralize, but often times she doesn't know the exceptions. Like she says "a scissor" and "two snowmans!"
She can repeat everything we say. Like "garbage disposal" or "pannettone."
Everything that happened in the past happened "yesterday."
She knows colors and shapes.
She knows when there is more than one of something, i.e. "two" but when there's more than that she still says "many" or "lots of." And she still counts 1,2, 5, 6. . . She hates that 3 and 4 for some reason.
Ok, I know I'm missing a bunch of things, but I guess I will just have to post again!

Also, the crazy thing about Lilli growing up so fast is that the twins are coming too! I'm 29 weeks pregnant now which means 9 weeks to go if everything works out perfectly. I crazy short about of time to prepare in but a crazy long time to be this much pregnant. I'm about the equivalent of 8 3/4 months pregnant. When I was pregnant with Lilli, strangers were always scared to say anything because it was possible I was just fat. Now though, there isn't much doubt as to my status. It's both kind of fun and annoying to be constantly having to talk about my pregnancy in public. Anyway, everything is going pretty smoothly. The "fetuses" (i hate that word for some reason!) are about three pounds each and besides making me incredibly uncomfortable seem to be pretty chill little babies. Someone commented that they wanted to see belly pics, but I'm sorry Internet, that is not going to go out for all the world to see. Suffice it to say that there are two three pound babies and lot of other stuff in there.

Well, until I remember what I forgot. . .